Many years ago Solarbo had in their range of products a material called 'Balsaply' like many things on the market over the yrears it just vanished into thin air,this material was the best thing ever offered to modellers as its strength to weight ratio for aircraft was brilliant,after my stocks dwindled to nothing I decided to find out the best way to make my own as I just could not live without this material.
Basically all it consists of is one sheet of balsa ay 1=16 th which had another layer of balsa cross grained of even traversed against it,the problem was finding the best adhesive to do the job as whilst anyone can just glue two pieces of wood together,getting the whole lot to stay flat was another thing,after a bit of experimenting I found that Scotch spraymount adhesive was the best thing to use,the important thing was to cut the cross sections of wood all ready to glue up first,then treat both surfaces with the adhesive and put the whole lot under pressure overnight,I used lots of heavy books to do this job and it worked fine,the only other thing to do is to seal the joins where the wood butts together,for this I used thin cyno just capillery reaction down the joints does the job,result a piece of balsaply to use on your next model.
For building up formers this material is second to non,you can pin it without splitting whilst glueing up,balsaply wing spars make excellent substitutes for heavier woods such as spruce etc a balsaply box spar will take tremendous loads under load,just build up your wing ribs around it.
Anti warp tailplanes are another area for the appropiate thickness of wood and dont forget you can easily mix different thicknesses.
Give it a try and you will be forever more finding new uses for this excellent material that you can make yourself.
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